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Rochelle Township High School Students Use Kami for Studying Novels in English Class

“I like the fact that the students in my class have powerful tools they are able to utilize not only in my class but also in any coursework in which they are attempting to utilize pdfs.” Brian Worthington

These days, there is more students can do with their devices in a classroom than without. While many argue that is a bad thing, the majority of people understand that we are living in a faster-paced digital world than we used to, and students need to be well-versed with technology if they are going to be the innovators of the future. I often have to remind myself that “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got,” a quote that I read painted on the wall of a classroom in New Jersey last year. To advance, we must innovate and try new things. Brian Worthington, an English teacher at Rochelle Township High School in Illinois, is someone who is doing just that in his classroom, where “classes are delivered about 90% digitally using a classroom set of Chromebooks.” With a preference for Google for Education, Brian was having trouble interacting with files and was looking for a way his students could work with PDFs for tasks such as research, the close reading of novels, and annotating handwritten Cornell notes and unit standards.

Brian was looking for a tool that both he and his students could use for research projects using primary and secondary sources. While many of us are used to printing off lengthy documents only to highlight a few passages, Brian was looking for a solution to doing all of this on his classroom’s Chromebooks. With Kami, Brian and his students are able to highlight and annotate nonfiction texts, and he can export all of the annotations made with page numbers attached, which make referencing a breeze.

As an English teacher, Brian needs students to annotate long texts such as novels. Gone are the days of messy notes in tiny margins and of going back through the school-assigned text and erasing annotations so the next students will have clean margins to work in! In his classroom, Brian distributes novels digitally in PDF format and has his students work on the texts in Kami. With Kami’s tools, students are able to highlight, add comments, and add text. There is also voice annotation for students who would rather explain using their own voice.

It is important that students have a good understanding of tasks that are assigned. Brian required a tool for annotating unit standards within his classroom as well as handwritten Cornell Notes. This is something he can do on Kami. Also, with his Kami Teacher Plan scanned documents are no problem, as Kami’s OCR tool detects the text from scanned copies; so, you can do just as much with the documents as you would if they had been created digitally. Brian says, “I love learning new ways to use a tool, and I am excited when one of my students shows me something I hadn’t thought of yet. We get to learn together.” Moreover, he likes the fact that his students can utilize the paid tools in the same way that he does.

Under the Kami Teacher Plan, Brian can work seamlessly with all of his students, in all of his classes. Working with documents in a variety of formats—especially PDFs, which was once a time-consuming and tedious task—is now a breeze by using Kami. The advantage of the Kami Schools Plan is that teachers can easily decide and upgrade within their classroom using their classroom budget allocated to materials and tools. In Brian’s case, he loves the point that the students in his class have powerful tools they can utilize not only in his class but also in any coursework in which they are attempting to utilize PDFs. Getting started with the Kami Teacher Plan is quick and easy so since you no longer have to go through the lengthy buying process of a typical purchasing structure. The Kami Teacher Plan lets you make the decision to purchase the right tools that you know will be beneficial to your classroom, quickly.

Purchase the Kami Teacher Plan for next year here and get another Kami Teacher Plan free, with the rest of this school year free! That means you (and all of your students) plus a teacher friend (and all of their students) get access to all of the tools Kami offers for $99. If you would like to learn more about out buy 1 get 1 free promotion, click here.